


Maladie d'amour

by unhappy_matt



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017)
Genre: Abandonment, Blood, Canon-Typical Angst, Flower Crowns, Fragmented Narration, Jealousy, Language of Flowers, Longing, M/M, Missing Moments, Pining, Smell, re-elaboration of canon moments, the inherent homoeroticism of plants, vintage French music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:48:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 5,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24652594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unhappy_matt/pseuds/unhappy_matt
Summary: The language of flowers accompanies Elio and Oliver through different moments in their relationship.
Relationships: Oliver/Elio Perlman
Comments: 40
Kudos: 51





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic ended up taking much longer than I expected to write. I started back at the beginning of May, but this gradually became a collection of many different ideas I had, and I didn't want to cut any of them.  
> In order to make it more directly accessible, this time I decided to write directly in English. 
> 
> I'm really happy with the final result and I'm excited to share it. <3

There is music playing inside the house. The warm air carries the notes of a tune Elio remembers from fragments of childhood memories. The powerful voice trembles and creaks, amplified by their old gramophone. 

When he passes by the living room, his parents are dancing in front of the fireplace. Cheek to cheek, his mother’s hand resting on his father’s shoulder, they sway slowly in the golden sunlight that pours from the windows.

Elio walks past the door, slipping out of the house.

He walks out into the blinding light and finds Oliver sitting at the table, finishing a rather late breakfast. A cigarette is burning away between his fingers while he turns the pages of the newspaper—yesterday’s issue, not today’s.

Elio slides into a seat on the opposite side of the table.

Oliver looks up.

“Who’s the singer?”

Elio turns toward the house.

“Édith Piaf,” he replies, reaching to grab a plum from the bowl at the center of the table. “ _Mon légionnaire._ ” He picks a piece of bread and starts to meticulously spread peach jam onto the dense, bubbly surface.

Oliver hums. “ _Légionnaire._ Like a soldier?”

“Yes.” Elio nods. “It’s a love song.” The rounded tip of the knife catches onto the bread. “The narrator is a woman who falls in love with a soldier. They’re only together for one night before he leaves.”

He sets down the knife. “Édith Piaf made the song famous, but the original isn’t hers. It was sung by Marie Dubas first, in 1936.”

Oliver takes a drag of his cigarette. “I see.”

Elio would like to make fun, in his mind, of the way the American says it, but something prevents him. Oliver has this way of speaking, especially to Elio—this sort of attentive contemplation, as if the answer truly mattered to him. As if he wanted to capture the fullest essence of the truth, even when the bluntness of his manners makes him sound dismissive.

Oliver turns the page and smoothes it out with a rustling sound.

“It’s a beautiful song. I love her voice.”

Ash drips from his slender fingers into the ashtray. “I can sense her pain.” He adds the latter observation carefully, with his face turned toward the source of the music. 

Elio stares at the water shining inside the pitcher. Lazy droplets slide down the glass surface.

“It’s a sad song,” he murmurs. “Like many of the songs Piaf sang.”

“There’s an element of tragedy to many love songs,” Oliver offers. He pauses. “Maybe an element of comedy, too.”

Their eyes meet.

Oliver smiles at him. The green of the garden is in his eyes. Oliver’s smile is bright—spontaneous and open—and brief. It dissipates quickly as the music fades, and Oliver’s face returns to its hiding spot behind the newspaper.

Elio plays with the plum and doesn’t eat it, pushing it around the white tablecloth with two fingertips.

Everything would be easier, if Oliver didn’t smile at him. 


	2. Chapter 2

“What are you reading?”

The sun is high and burning in the clear sky.

Elio walks across the grass, warm under his bare feet, to stand next to Oliver.

Oliver is lying on his back, wearing his usual sunglasses, with an arm slung over his face. There’s a book resting on his stomach, opened face-down.

“This?” Oliver picks up the volume, barely lifting his arm to show it to Elio. The cover is soft, a bit worn and faded; it’s a light peach color. Elio recognizes it from somewhere, but he can’t find it in his memory until Oliver adds: “Mrs. Perlman allowed me to borrow it.”

It’s an old handbook on the language of plants and flowers, with comparisons between meanings and myths across different cultures. Elio has seen it lying around from time to time, one of the thousands of books in their house. He’d skimmed through the pages, as a kid, spending hours trying to copy some of the illustrations in clumsy watercolor renditions that never turned out quite the way he wanted.

Oliver hadn’t struck him as someone who would care about reading something like that.

At the moment, anyway, Oliver isn’t quite reading. He yawns behind the back of his hand and sets the book down, crossing his arms behind his head. His large feet peek through the glass blades. The pose of his massive figure surrounded by green is lax and cat-like; an abandoned statue in the middle of Elio’s garden.

Elio bites back a _“Later!”_ that’s threatening to slip out, because it feels gentle on the tip of his tongue, rather than mocking, and he leaves Oliver to his napping. Bringing his backpack with him, he sits not far away, retreating to the shade of the veranda.

He tries to compose, nibbling on the wood of his pencil.

Oliver sleeps.

-

The book disappears from Elio’s mind again for a couple of days, until one afternoon when he finds it neatly closed, resting on one of the armchairs. A folded up blank sheet has been slipped through the pages as a makeshift bookmark. Oliver seems to have read roughly one third of the book.

Elio plops down on the armchair. Oliver is outside, swimming.

Elio slides his fingertips over the spine of the book. He leafs through the pages, listening to the quiet crinkling noise of old, yellowed paper.

He glances toward the door, out of habit, although he can’t see Oliver from where he’s sitting.

Shrugging, he opens the book on the introduction.

“Is it a good read?”

Elio slides the book across the wooden table, allowing Oliver to take it—challenging him to answer.

Oliver’s hair is damp, and he’s wearing his t-shirt inside out. The shadows from the leaves and the vines above them form intricate patterns on his face.

Oliver nods and shrugs. The evening air is pleasantly cool, now that the sunlight is beginning to turn golden and orange.

“It’s relaxing… being able to read something I don’t have to study. Or write a dissertation on. It’s a nice change of pace.”

He looks at Elio. His smile turns playful.

“You’re not gonna grade me, are you?”

Like an inexorable pull, Elio feels compelled to smile back, the corners of his mouth curling upwards against his will.

“Maybe not.”

Oliver’s gaze lingers.

“You can have the book, when I’m not reading it.” He pats the cover, smoothing it down with his palm. “It’s your stuff, after all.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Hey, are you going downtown?”

Oliver walks up to him just as Elio is about to hop on his bicycle. He stops, keeping it upright in a balance that all of a sudden is feeling a lot more precarious.

“Yeah, I have to run a few errands.”

Oliver is standing tall in the golden light, wearing a pair of white shorts, a pale green polo t-shirt. The heat blurs the contours of his figure, like a mirage in a desert.

“Mind if I join you?” Oliver rubs his nape. “I’ve been writing all afternoon. My head feels like it’s going to explode.”

Elio shrugs. His heart hammers against his ribs. He gestures toward Anchise’s bike, which Oliver has already previously used.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

_La signora Giovanna_ is an old woman who must be in her eighties, with deep wrinkles seared into tanned skin. She was already old when Elio used to come on holiday as a child, when she would pat his head and offer him sour candies from a tiny ceramic bowl on her counter, which was taller than he was.

She is still the sole owner of his mother’s favorite florist shop, which she handles almost exclusively by herself, with the occasional assistance of a thirty-something niece.

Her face brightens when Elio comes in. She compliments his height, his hair, she inquires about his parents and his friends. She is enraptured by the American guest, delighted when Oliver replies to a few of her rapid-fire questions in his tentative Italian.

Nibbling on the inside of his cheek, Elio looks around the shop and makes his choice.

Oliver leans closer.

“I’ll see you outside. Take your time.”

About fifteen minutes later, Elio comes out of the shop, carrying his prize—a large bouquet of multicolored flowers. He chose his mother’s favorites. Roses, because she loves them the most. Pink and white and orange roses, because she already likes to grow her own red varieties. Red and yellow tulips, and Amaryllis Belladonna.

“Wow,” Oliver comments. A pause. “For Marzia?”

The way he asks it seems casual, conversational—as if that is the most obvious and immediate assumption one might make from the context.

“For my mother,” Elio corrects him, sharper than he means to. “She asked me to buy something to liven up the house.”

He doesn’t know why he’s feeling the need to even talk about this, why in the world he should be justifying himself to their guest. Oliver’s the one who insisted on coming with, anyway.

“Oh.” Oliver looks away, turning his back to glance around in the sparsely populated square.

Elio focuses his attention on the act of hanging the basket with the flowers onto the handlebar without ruining them. He pushes the bicycle along on foot, stubbornly striding under the heat. There’s a punishing quality to the way he relishes that pointless effort. Oliver follows, mirroring him.

“You should buy flowers for Chiara,” Elio says. The sound of his own voice feels like handling a dagger. He turns, but Oliver isn’t looking his way.

“Hm. Maybe.” Despite acknowledging him, Oliver doesn’t seem to be paying a lot of attention to what Elio said, or to his own answer. He seems absent, hiding behind the barrier of his sunglasses.

It’s irking Elio for no reason. It’s making him want to poke the other’s arm, demand that Oliver look him in the eye.

“Maybe I’ll give a rose to Marzia,” Elio adds, after all, tensing as he waits for Oliver’s reaction.

Oliver’s fingers brush Elio’s shoulder in a way that seems like an afterthought, a hesitation before retreating.

“Yeah. You do that.”

Mounting his bike, he ruffles Elio’s head as he passes him by.

“Wanna race home?” 

Elio does not feel like it, not particularly, but they do it anyway.

He loses.

-

His mother puts the bouquet inside a vase with fresh water and kisses his forehead.

Elio calls Marzia; she is coming to dinner that night anyway, but they spend half an hour on the phone. Her voice is quieter than usual, weirdly hesitant; she begins sentences that she doesn’t finish, abandoning them in muted ellipses.

Later, when they meet, Elio gives her one of the flowers. A white rose. Something in his mind is telling him that he shouldn’t; but the rose makes her smile, and she lifts it to her face to smell it, and she slides her arms around his neck and presses her body to his chest.

They walk together, just barely out of sight, away from their families that are having dinner and chatting outside in the Perlmans’ garden.

Marzia holds his hand. Her brown locks sway in the sweet-smelling breeze.

Oliver isn’t home that night, when Elio goes upstairs. He hasn’t showed up for the entire evening.

Elio looks around and then he slips into the room that normally belongs to him.

Walking up to his desk, he finds the book resting on top of a pile of notes.

Holding his breath, Elio sets his improvised gift over the book cover.

An Amaryllis Belladonna flower, picked from his mother’s bouquet. _Shyness_.

It’s a tentative apology, a conciliatory gesture. He remembers his father’s comment about Oliver’s attitude—the suggestion that maybe their American guest is shy, rather than arrogant. Maybe Oliver will understand. _I’m like you. I’m shy, too._

He adds a branch from the particular brand of American wisteria that his parents like to cultivate because its dainty violet petals continue to flourish throughout the summer. Wisteria: _admiration. Respect. Worship._ And a warning against obsession—Elio is embarrassed, ashamed, almost, of how intensely he keeps wanting Oliver to like him.

He’s uncovering himself, baring the offer of his friendship. The danger of it is thrilling.

Will Oliver decipher his code? Will his gift be accepted?

Elio leaves the flowers and walks out. That night, he can’t concentrate on anything he tries to read.


	4. Chapter 4

From his spot leaning against the window sill, Elio rests his chin on his arms.

He breathes in the fresh afternoon air, electric and cool, heavy with the rich scent of the downpour a couple hours before.

When Elio came down for breakfast that morning, Oliver wasn’t around, and they haven’t spoken more than a couple words to each other all day, during the few brief moments when their paths crossed.

If Oliver saw Elio’s gift, if he thought anything of it—if perhaps he simply chose to quietly discard it—he said nothing about it, revealed no reaction.

Elio’s parents are again in the living room. Music is playing, its trembling echo bouncing from wall to wall. Today it’s the ethereal chime of Marie Laforêt singing “ _Mon amour, mon ami_ ”.

Elio closes his eyes and buries his face between his arms.

“Elio!”

Oliver comes to him and his presence, again, captivates Elio’s attention. He lifts his eyes.

Oliver comes to him with his hair dripping and his t-shirt clinging to his body, dark and heavy from the water of the river, where he went swimming under the rain. Oliver stands close, leaning into Elio’s space, resting his forearm on the window sill.

“Here,” Oliver declares. “Take this.”

Before Elio even has a chance to react and anticipate what Oliver is doing, Oliver lifts his hand and places something on top of Elio’s head, something light and wet and barely there.

“… _Cosa…_?”

He reaches up to remove a crown of dampened flowers from his hair. Elio shakes his head, hunching his shoulders with a display of exaggerated annoyance; but he holds the crown in his palms, with its colors that are bright and intense against the paleness of his hands.

Oliver smiles, lifting himself up, standing tall against the dark grey sky.

“You looked like you needed to clear your head,” he says. “Those flowers are magic. Trust me.” He winks, with a light touch to Elio’s arm—then he’s gone again.

Elio opens his mouth, but his voice curls up and dies inside his throat, too late for him to counter with a witty remark.

Elio lays out the crown in front of him. It’s made of two entangled twigs from the nearby peach and apricot trees. The branches are tender and pliable; white and delicate pink are mixed together in a lively flurry.

Carefully, he detaches one of the peach flowers and holds it up, rolling it between his fingers.

He slides it between his lips.

He suckles on it, slowly, biting into it, pressing it under his tongue until the petals are crumpled and wet and sticking to the roof of his mouth, filling his nose with sweet scent. Above, the clouds roll slow and heavy; it’s going to rain again soon.

From inside comes Mafalda’s voice, louder, fussing over Oliver’s wet clothes, what if he catches a cold?

Oliver’s reply is quieter, more difficult to decipher. Elio furrows his brow, sinking his teeth into flower petals.

Oliver asks Mafalda if he can take an apricot.

-

Through the wall comes the noise of the water falling from the shower. Lying on his bed, Elio closes his eyes.

He plays with the flower crown resting on his naked belly. He cards his fingers through the petals, petting them like they’re a breathing animal creature.

The bathroom door is closed. Oliver is behind that door, just a few steps away. Naked, like Elio. And what if Oliver were to come out of the bathroom soon, and burst into Elio’s room without knocking, like he did other times? Perhaps by mistake, distracted after the shower, or he could pretend that it was a mistake, that he somehow got their rooms confused. Elio could pretend to believe him.

He shakes his head. He should get dressed.

The flowers of a peach tree, his father had taught him once, are hermaphrodite flowers, containing male and female parts. In Italy, their meaning is connected to admiration and gratitude.

He lifts the crown and presses it to his face, drowning in scent.

Peach flowers can also signify feelings of love. A love that is passionate, and intense, and eternal.


	5. Chapter 5

Oliver finds him when Elio excuses himself from the table and goes hide somewhere he can press ice to his nose and let the bleeding run its course.

_“That wasn’t my fault, right?”_ Oliver asks him, joining Elio in the cozy isolation of the shadows, sliding into the sort of closeness that Oliver himself, just a while ago, had implied they should avoid.

Elio shakes his head and he would like to huff, _“No,”_ what a silly question to ask, this isn’t his fault.

What? The bleeding? No.

But this feeling, the ache, buried deeply inside Elio’s belly, in his chest, this singing inside his veins that explodes into a million fragments of light the moment Oliver’s fingers touch his ankles—

Oliver kisses him, after he said they shouldn’t, and Elio drops the ice and kisses him back.

Oliver licks Elio’s lips, like Elio did to him, when he tasted Oliver for the first time with their bodies on top of each other in Elio’s secret place.

Oliver licks the blood that has drizzled down to Elio’s mouth and chin. Elio groans into the slight sting of that kiss, clinging to Oliver’s shoulders. Oliver suckles on Elio’s lower lip with a tender trace of teeth, holding Elio’s face in his hands like he’s made of glass.

 _Why_ , Elio wants to ask him. Why does the air in his lungs feel like it’s not enough, when Oliver pulls away.

This is what Oliver does to him; he shatters Elio and reorganizes him to his liking, in his image, and every time he leaves, Oliver takes with him a new fragment of Elio’s essence.

Oliver’s fingers trace Elio’s jaw. There’s a smear of Elio’s blood on his mouth.

_You didn’t have to do that,_ Elio doesn’t tell him. The kiss. Or the blood. Connecting their bodies this way, after saying they should keep their distance.

Is _this_ something they should be ashamed of? Elio feels no shame.

This time, when Oliver leaves, he doesn’t ask Elio if his kiss made him feel better.


	6. Chapter 6

Elio waits.

Minutes and hours slip by, drip by drip, as he listens to the sounds of the night outside the window, and Oliver doesn’t come.

Elio tosses and turns, kicking the sheets, throwing his body on the old mattress like a shipwreck. This bed isn’t as comfortable as his own—the one in which, maybe, Oliver is not sleeping tonight.

His pulsing blood is full of poison.

He had hoped. He had dared to hope.

He grasps the pillow so brutally that he could tear it.

That morning Oliver bought begonias for Elio’s mother. To thank her for the hospitality. The hypocrite—Elio’s sure he’s _grateful_.

_Traitor_ , Elio growls, pressing the pillow over his head. He shoves his face into the mattress that smells like himself, not like Oliver, because Oliver has never lingered there, never laid his body down on top of his, outside of Elio’s dreams.

He ruts against the bed, dragging his body slowly until it feels raw and painful. In his mind, inside his mouth, Oliver is so close and so _real_ he can taste him—all of him. Elio’s cock swells between his thighs, trapped against his belly.

From his nightstand comes the acre scent of the flower crown Oliver made for him, sweet and putrid, its natural decay accelerated by the humid heat.

Vehemently he conjures in his mind pages he read from the book, stirring them in a mix of painful, colorful flashes.

Sunflower: _My love is unhappy._

Yellow rose: _Jealousy._

Absinthe: _Absence._

Anemone: _Misplaced trust. Waiting. Abandonment._


	7. Chapter 7

There’s a flower on Elio’s desk. A golden gladiolus.

Elio strokes the colorful petals with his fingertips in a cautious caress.

The gift of this flower carries many meanings. It can signify joy, honor, strength of character; it can imply that the receiver has left a strong impression on the sender. Whether that impression is a positive or a negative one can be ambiguous.

Is Oliver suggesting that he’s been struck by Elio? Could that be true?

The brightness of the flower is like Oliver’s smile, like his golden hair, like Oliver’s skin tanning in the heat. Elio can sense the echo of Oliver’s drily humorous tone, that trace of gentle mockery that often makes it difficult to tell if he’s laughing at Elio, or with Elio, or perhaps at himself.

The flower teases him, like a secret shared. Touching it feels the way Oliver’s body does, when his shoulder brushes against Elio’s arm, or when he ruffles Elio’s hair.

Is Oliver chiding him, gently, for being so moody, and clumsy, and headstrong? Making fun of Elio, from the high ground of a man who can say of himself, _I know what I’m like_?

Next to the flower there’s a small piece of paper.

_Midnight. Grow up._

An appointment.

Maybe Oliver does not hate him, after all. Maybe he…

He wants Elio to meet him. That is the only thing that is certain. Only the night will reveal what Oliver means to tell him.

Until that moment, waiting is already impossible.


	8. Chapter 8

“Where are we planting them?”

Elio walks him to a spot around a corner, not too distant from one of the rose bushes planted by Elio’s mother.

“Here.”

They kneel down in the grass, with Elio’s tools that he borrowed from his mother.

Oliver holds on to the pack of seeds they bought earlier that morning. He’s bare-chested; glistening beads of sweat roll down his golden skin.

“What are they called in Italian?” he asks, handing Elio the shovel.

“ _Non ti scordar di me_ ,” Elio replies. “Like in English. _Forget-me-not_.” He slides two fingertips up Oliver’s wrist. 

There’s the shadow of something painful, for a moment, in the twitch of Oliver’s smile. He touches Elio in return, thumbing along the veins on the back of Elio’s hand.

“I hope they grow. I’ve never planted flowers.”

The allusion to the future that is striding toward them hangs in the air between them, razor-sharp.

They let it fall, allowing it to dissolve. They dig under the afternoon sun, breathing in unison.

“Your mother’s roses are beautiful,” Oliver says, in quiet admiration. He lifts his hand to stroke the burgundy petals.

“Careful,” Elio tries to tell him, tries to warn him—against what, he doesn’t know. Oliver’s hand doesn’t stop; his fingers glide down a green stalk the same way he touches Elio’s skin.

A dark droplet of blood drips from Oliver’s finger. An accident or a small, deliberate, self-inflicted act that Elio doesn’t fully comprehend.

They both stare, for a moment, as it falls, disappearing into the dark ground.

“I’m feeding the earth,” Oliver murmurs, solemn and entirely serious. His voice is a muted whisper, like a prayer. He says it as if it’s obvious and natural, a secret ritual only the two of them know. And it is, and Elio believes him.

“Wait,” Elio breathes out. “Don’t move.”

Oliver doesn’t, and Elio is back a few moments later, returning from inside the quiet house.

He holds Oliver’s upturned palm in his hands, grazing Oliver’s wrist with his fingertips. _The weight of holding something sacred_ , he thinks to himself. He wraps a white handkerchief around Oliver’s finger, knotting the corners carefully to keep it in place. The fabric carries the faint tang of disinfectant.

Oliver looks at Elio’s handiwork. A tiny red dot stains the white cloth.

“Won’t it get ruined?”

Elio shrugs.

“Don’t worry about it. You can keep it.” He lets go of Oliver’s hand.

“Okay.” Oliver stares into Elio’s eyes, intent and hungry. “I’ll keep it.”

-

The moon is yellow and swollen and high above them.

“Come,” Oliver tells him, and they hold hands, their fingers entwined as they walk into the silent darkness of the garden.

Elio follows him. The night is warm. His mind is dizzy with the scent of Oliver’s skin, with the tangible realness of his body.

They walk to their spot, the spot where their flowers will grow, nourished by the sunlight and the dark, humid terrain—by Oliver’s sweat and blood.

Oliver turns and Elio pulls him in by the sleeve of his shirt and kisses him. Oliver embraces him, melting into Elio’s kiss like he’s breaking.

They lie down in the soft grass, facing each other. Their hands find each other first; their bodies follow.

They make love, rolling over the humid soil. The dirt clings to their clothes and to their bare skin, smearing them with long, dark streaks that they wash off later in the creek, as the first pale rose lights of dawn peek through the trees.

-

It’s a different night. They don’t have many more left.

They’re sat in their spot amidst tree branches. The silver moonlight cuts through the blue of the night; their faces reflect the flickering orange of their lit cigarettes.

“Oliver.”

“Yes?”

Elio bites his tongue.

“I… have something for you.”

Oliver looks at him curiously, extinguishing his cigarette.

“Show me.”

Elio fishes inside the backpack he’d brought along, refusing to explain what he needed it for.

He hands Oliver two flowers wrapped in crinkling silver paper. The shade is difficult to make out in the dark, but Oliver nods, moving to hold them with a sudden uncertainty to his gestures.

“Yellow tulips,” Elio murmurs. He feels fragile, raw, walking on a string that will break at any moment.

Yellow tulips.

_Desperate love._

Oliver grabs Elio’s hand. His own hand is shaking.

He kisses Elio’s knuckles, and presses the flowers to his heart.

“Thank you.” His voice breaks. _“Oliver.”_


	9. Chapter 9

“That song. _Mon légionnaire_.”

They’re lying in bed together, at dawn, in a tangle of sheets wrapped around their ankles and hips. Oliver’s nose is in the crook of Elio’s neck; he presses kisses to Elio’s shoulder, an arm slid around Elio’s waist.

Elio opens his eyes.

“What about it?” he mumbles, reaching to touch Oliver’s face, his sweaty hair.

“Would you write down a translation of the lyrics for me?”

 _I would like to take it with me,_ Oliver doesn’t say, but Elio understands.

Elio holds on to him, curling closer. He kisses Oliver’s chest, his jaw.

“I will.”

He writes down the English translation on one of his unused music sheets, using his favorite fountain pen.

His translation isn’t poetic or refined, it isn’t his greatest work, but he tries to preserve the meaning the best way he can. Oliver asked this of him; Elio needs him to understand.

_He had very clear eyes_

_Where sometimes thunderbolts would pass_

_Like storms pass through the sky (…)_

_Happiness lost, happiness gone,_

_Every day I think back to that night_

_And the desire of his skin torments me_

_Sometimes I cry, and then I think_

_That while I was resting on his chest,_

_I should have cried out my joy_

_But I dared not tell him anything_

_I was afraid_

_Of seeing him smile…_

Oliver is going to leave. They have always known, but now the days are disappearing one after the other, swallowed by a tide that cannot be stopped. The awareness of their dwindling time together is becoming corporeal, impossible to ignore.

Oliver leaves behind his shirt, like Elio asked him to. Pinned to the shirt, there’s a note, and inside the folded paper, a tiny bundle of poppies.

Elio opens the note, and he undoes the thin string that keeps the flowers together, and the poppies rain down on his hand, scattering on the floor like bright red bullets.

He imagines Oliver picking them up from dusty roadsides, during one of his last trips through the expanses of silent grain fields. They’re fresh, silky and fragile when Elio picks them up one by one to cup them in his hands, to press them to his lips like a kiss.

Poppies. _Oblivion._

 _Forget about me_ , Oliver is begging him, even though he left behind pieces of himself, inside the house and on Elio’s skin, in Elio’s soul. Oliver can go, but this ache that has settled inside of him will never leave.

 _Forget about me._ It’s the sensible option; it’s what would be best for both of them, what would be best for Elio.

And yet Elio knows, he _knows_ that Oliver doesn’t truly believe it, he doesn’t expect _Elio_ to believe it.

_Forget about me._

But the bond between them has been buried deep beneath the ground, and Elio can’t forget.


	10. Chapter 10

The light hurts his eyes when he stumbles out of the house and into the garden. His steps are heavy and uncertain as he advances on the blindingly white gravel, lifting small clouds of dust under his feet. He feels wine-drunk, aching all over, like a fever in the wrong season.

Elio kneels near the roses, in _their_ spot. The sun burns on his nape. There are no tears in his eyes now, not anymore, after all those that flowed freely the day before, and earlier in the morning. He spilled them into his pillow, awake before dawn and unable to sleep.

He hasn’t gone back to his bedroom yet, even though he could. Now it’s empty once again, everything washed and cleaned up. His territory no longer usurped.

Elio sits, there where he and Oliver planted their blue memento. He presses his palm to the soil. The grass is soft and bristly under his knees, but the ground is solid and hard. It traps the heat of the day, releasing it back against his skin.

Their flowers will bloom. He will take gentle care of them; and in a few months, he will write Oliver a letter, and he will send him a picture, so that Oliver will see them, all the way back in America.

His parents inside are playing music again. The song travels to his ears through the open windows; Édith Piaf’s rendition of “ _L’accordéoniste_ ”.

The corners of his eyes start stinging again. There’s a tremor in his body, and it hasn’t stopped since he walked away from that train platform. With every movement he’s disintegrating.

He has put the poppies Oliver left him inside his drawers between his clothes, and pressed them between book pages and music sheets. He slipped a few inside his pillow case. Mafalda will find them, and maybe she will ask him about them. He doesn’t care.

He keeps the flowers close to his face at night, like he does with Oliver’s shirt. Their smell will stay with him until they’re all wilted or dried out. They’re Oliver’s gift, and he won’t throw them away.

He remembers, then, something else that his father had explained to him once.

Poppies don’t just mean oblivion. Poppies are also the flowers of remembrance.

The music grows into a violent vortex, a dissonant crescendo, as the abandoned protagonist of the song spins, and spins, and dances her grief away.

Elio sobs, digging his nails into the grass. The sorrowful melody continues. The volume seems to grow louder and louder, frenzied and deafening, piercing through the quiet, drowning out the monotonous chant of cicadas.

_“Arr_ _êtez!”,_ sings Piaf. _“Arr_ _ê_ _tez la musique!”_

Elio’s tears flood his eyes.

_Make the music stop._

He presses his palms to his ears.

_Please. Make the music stop._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes I'm really just around to kick everyone's feelings, I'm sorry. 
> 
> -
> 
> This fic turned out to be one of those very raw, very visceral writing moments, and I poured a lot of my personal experiences of heartache into it. It makes me feel very exposed, but it's something I needed to get out of my system.

**Author's Note:**

> The fic is titled after "Maladie d'amour" by joanna, which gives me massive Oliver/Elio vibes. 
> 
> I'm a Pretentious Polyglot, just like Elio, since we happen to speak the same languages - Italian, English, and French. Writing for this fandom allows me to flex a little bit, to be honest, and it's very fun. >:) 
> 
> I initially started writing this fic before reading the book, but in the meantime my best friend gifted it to me, and I'm in the middle of reading it!!! I ended up incorporating a mixture of elements from both the film and the book into this story. I'm loving the novel so much. <3 
> 
> Please note that I'm not by any means an expert on the language of flowers, or on gardening. I did quite a lot of research, and I used elements from a mixture of sources, but I also ultimately used a bit of poetic license. I don't expect my work to be completely accurate and correct.


End file.
